You are free to do what you want, but I hope you won’t use those kind of arguments to feel entitled to pirate it and spit upon the work of those who translated the texts and ported the game to a new engine.

It’s because of reactions like this that the visual novel fanbase is screwed, and they couldn’t licence the dub exactly because almost everyone pirate their games instead of buying them.

Francesco Mario Azzena

yes i’ll gladly pirate the japanese version if that cost too much or if it’s out of stock on the japanese e-shops. i’m a customer not a money-printer. if i’m going to buy it i want it boxed and complete like the japanese version. or at least a digital only version without the drm. to clarify my statement i’ll buy the mangagamer version without the drm.

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

So yea, this is the kind of person we ban without a warning, just in case people are curious. :p

Ladius

As a customer you have every right to boycott a publisher because of DRM, dd-only distribution, lack of dub and so on, everyone has his own standards.

What you have no right to do is using those points as a legitimate reason to pirate the game, refusing to support Apoptosis and MangaGamer who spent countless hours translating the game, changing the engine and working out the deal with Innocent Grey.

http://www.carpefulgur.com SpaceDrake

Oh Ishaan, I do heart you so. <3

Although you banned him before he could reply to my question! Sad face.

mirumu

If you’re pirating it you aren’t a customer. You have no input or investment in the product at all. You’re a lost customer at best.

It certainly does feel like being between a rock and a hard place at times though with the choice being to purchase something that lacks a lot of the features you want, or to not purchase it at all and reduce the chance of future titles coming over. To buy or not to buy is our choice, but if companies release flawed products I do like to contact them and tell them what my problems with it are. They won’t ever change if no one tells them.

http://www.carpefulgur.com SpaceDrake

$35 is too much for a very large, text-heavy adventure game (setting any “ero” bits and whatnot aside) which had to be significantly redeveloped in order to function properly in English? Really? What WOULD be a fair price then, in your estimation?

And MangaGamer provided a very fair explanation as to why the game doesn’t include the voices; I’m very familiar with the vagaries of trying to get professional voicework in games, and their tale of the voices being outrageously expensive is completely believable. That’s hardly a point to criticize them on, because they’d likely bankrupt themselves if they tried to do otherwise.

All this being said, you’ll never see me defend DRM.

http://www.twitter.com/christaran Chris Taran

The point to criticize them on is that if they couldn’t get the complete game they should have never touched the property. I hope it sells abysmally for them.

http://twitter.com/Yuyucow kViN

I find these kind of comments hilarious. I most likely care about voice acting more than you do, to the point of having watched countless shows exclusively because of the seiyuu working on them. But despite that, I didn’t mind having to play this voiceless because the game has not even one great VA in its cast.
Would it have been better with voices? Of course, no one’s going to deny that. Is the loss important enough so that MG should have just scrapped the idea? No, and as I said this is coming from someone who cares more than he should about voice acting.

http://www.twitter.com/christaran Chris Taran

Don’t assume other peoples care for voice acting. You are (and this is going to be a surprise to you apparantly) not the only one that watches anime based on the cast.

http://twitter.com/Yuyucow kViN

I’m glad you care as much as I do! Now you’ll be glad to know KnS had average at its best voice acting so no reason to be overly angry anymore!

Temuthril

Many console game localizers do english dub only, removing the original voice acting. Do you hope the same for them as well?

(As a disclaimer, I’d wish dual audio would be more used; I’m not pro-dubs.)

http://www.twitter.com/christaran Chris Taran

I would have no problem if they did an English dub. At least it would be a replacement.

http://geekouts.blogspot.com/ miruki

And if it sounds like the La Blue Girl anime dub, I’d instantly turn the voices off and curse the company for making me pay $60 instead of $35 for a voiceless version.

I don’t get the fuss over the voices, if the story and gameplay are great enough on it’s own then it’s okay. And nobody said that furute releases won’t have voices. And I do hope for future Innocent Grey titles from Mangagamer. But if nobody buys Kara no Shoujo because of the lack of voices, I guess there won’t be other Innocent Grey titles anywhere in the near future.

Historiata

I’m just spitballing here, Chris, but I think that actually applying yourself to learn the language would be a better use of your time. You know, rather than posting on game forums with such passion and assuming that your opinion actually matters.

http://www.carpefulgur.com SpaceDrake

This is an wretchedly cynical position to take. So just because circumstances were such that they couldn’t secure the rights to a *single minor aspect* of the game, that means they shouldn’t touch it at all and shouldn’t try to get the developers more exposure and more profit?

http://www.twitter.com/christaran Chris Taran

You can marginalize it all you want. It is not a minor aspect to myself and to others. It is a significant part of the experience. I didn’t care for it when Sega cut out parts of Yakuza 4, I certainly didn’t care for it when other companies were doing similar things in the 80′s and 90′s. I thought we had moved on to higher standards, but clearly with companies like Manga Gamer that is sadly not the case.

If you want to support this kind of action, you are free to do so. I however would like to see an end to this nonsense and I hope enough people vote with their wallets by not buying this game and not supporting these practices.

Exkaiser

Take notes, gang, this is a grade-A specimen of a Vicious Cycle.

We’ll be seeing it again on the test.

Ladius

You know why the vo aren’t in this game? Because a third company (not MangaGamer nor InnocentGrey) which holds the right to the Japanese dub thought that a visual novel publisher in the west must pay the same price as the anime publishers.

Do you know why this is unfeasible? Because visual novels in the west sell from some hundreds copies to 2k at best, and paying the price that company was asking would have granted a sure loss for MangaGamer, being many times as much as the whole cost of the localization process.

To sum it up, MangaGamer should either work losing money or not localize the game (and we would miss one of the best investigative vns out there), and the fact that people are reacting as you are (i.e. refusing to support their games and, I hope not in your case, pirating them) is exactly the reason they aren’t able to licence the voice-overs. It’s not that they’re cheap or petty, it’s that they are between the hammer of an unreasonable third party dub company and the anvil of a piracy-entitled, unsupportive fanbase.

Let MangaGamer die and it’s back to the old “only nukiges on the horizon” for the official vn scene, since that would send a message to JAST and others that the public simply don’t care to support something more demanding.

mirumu

The cuts to the recent Yakuza titles really were a step too far for me and as such I haven’t bought any since Yakuza 2. I expect more from an in-house localization. I told SEGA why in an email and left it at that. I’m not going to be buying Catherine for much the same reason assuming the “no dual audio” rumors are correct. I’m not happy with the voices being gone from Kara no Shoujo either, but I don’t blame Mangagamer for it. I believe they would if they could. I’m not going to punish them for the Japanese record company’s unrealistic demands.

The trigger for the buy/no buy decision is different for everyone. At the end of the day if they annoy enough consumers at any one time their sales will suffer. Time will tell.

I do get where you’re coming from though. Everytime I think we’re past this a new example pops up to lower the bar again. Maybe it would have been better if Mangagamer had translated a different game instead. If they made a habit of this they’d lose support fairly quickly I’m sure. I do respect their effort in trying to bring over higher quality titles though.

http://mangagamer.wordpress.com/ Kouryuu

I think DRM is an issue that will be around and heated so long as piracy remains in place. The majority of developers and publishers want it in order to protect their IP, and the users either don’t care either way or thoroughly hate it.

At the same time though, look at Steam. Steam is essentially a complex DRM+ platform to manage the digital rights of all the games on it. Sure, some people dislike it and refuse to have anything to do with it, but that isn’t going to stop hundreds of thousands to millions of people from buying Portal 2 on it. So the majority of users don’t care strongly enough against DRM, so long as it doesn’t get in their way.

At MangaGamer, that’s basically our stance. So long as it is a digital download, DRM is necessary because developers/publishers want it to protect their works, but we don’t want to use DRM that’s expensive and steps on everyone’s toes. When it does we’ll do what we can to work with you and resolve the problem, and it’s not like we’ll turn down a request for more activations as long as you aren’t burning through them suspiciously fast.

And the truth is, even if DRM only holds piracy off for a few hours, that can mean that many more sales, simply because people can be impatient. Also, while many gamers and anime fans probably do know how to torrent, there are still plenty of people our age out there who don’t, as well as people who would rather not bother.

Either way, for anyone who’s in the camp that’s vehemently against DRM, I would suggest purchasing our hard-copies. They’re DRM-free.

Chippel

The ones that are largely unavailable and through a site that, last I saw, didn’t seem to have been updated in a good while? It’s a good option, just not a viable one all considering.

mirumu

I think you’ll find a lot of people don’t even realise Steam has DRM. There’s very little sign of it’s presence in most cases. And yes, it doesn’t tend to get in the way. Generally speaking though I don’t think consumers are quite as blasé about DRM as you suggest. PC gamers especially. They may decide to buy in spite of it’s DRM, but that doesn’t mean they’ll always do that. As to DRM’s effectiveness I wouldn’t like to speculate as to how many sales are lost vs how many are gained. I certainly don’t think the decision can be considered a no-brainer.

To me personally DRM is a very big instant black mark on a game. Even on Steam. I may still buy it anyway, and in the case of Steam that essentially means the game has to be extremely cheap to offset any limitations the DRM might impose. I’ll happily pay $5 for a game with DRM, but never full price. Otherwise I’ll only buy a game that has DRM in very special circumstances, and currently I consider your titles in that category.

Chippel

Good comment. I’ve sometimes wondered how many sales they’re losing just by having DRM in the first place (everyone, not just MangaGamer). With limited activations and SecuROM among other restrictive DRM schemes, the mere combination of those three letters can bring about negative feelings.

I like to have the ability to play a game ten years from purchase date, so DRM is an instant black mark for me too, and I’m definitely not as vehemently against it as some people are. A ridiculously good deal can be attractive even with DRM, but even with rampant piracy, I suspect quite a few are repelled by the thought of paying a decent amount of money for a game that isn’t fully theirs and that that may have an effect on their (surprisingly low) sales figures. I understand it’s hard for them trying to establish their niche. I just hope they can work out their physical copies to be more convenient and have a wider variety of games.

Crimson_Cloud

Not to offend anyone, but I’ve seen more work put into games like these from fan community, who aren’t being paid at that, then MangaGamer.

Francesco Mario Azzena

capitalism ho!

burucchi

How so, exactly? As far as I can tell the translation is excellent and there’s nothing wrong with the new engine either. Care to elaborate?

http://twitter.com/Yuyucow kViN

Not to offend you, but this game was worked on by the fan community, who then talked with MG and Innogre to bring the game officialy. So yeah, that excuse doesn’t really work.

burucchi

How so? Care to elaborate? As far as I can see the translation work is excellent, and the port to the new engine was carried over flawlessly. Mind you, I’ve yet to see a fan-translation of a game that ported the whole thing over to a new engine due to issues using the original one.

Francesco Mario Azzena

what he’s saying that the fan community does the work and mangagamer takes the profits, sell the game without the voices and with DRMs.

burucchi

The thing is, they’re not taking the “work” of the fan community. Like I said up there, MG was the one who ported the WHOLE game to a different engine, because the original was presenting a lot of issues to the original fans who were translating the game. Plus! They did get a C&D from InoGre, the company who owns the rights to Kara no Shoujo, which later on was investigated and turns out they, InoGre, wanted to have their game released on the west officially. So, MG came in and the deal was made.

Now, I understand why people would complain about DRM but in this day and age it’s just something people live with it. Besides, it doesnt bother me nearly as much when a small company like MG does, because the sales aren’t exactly amazing and you gotta make do with what you have. But the voices? That’s just unfair. It’s been explained already by them that they tried for months to get the voices for the game, but the agency who holds the rights to the voice talents in this game did not want to lower their prices. To put it bluntly, agency expected MG to dish out the same amount of money that a Japanese company would to license their voices. This is unrealistic, because these games have a very limited market in the west and aren’t, for now at least, profitable enough for them to pay such a large sum.

That said, to each his own. But it’s obvious a fan could release this voiced and DRM-free, after all, it’s not like they’re paying for a license and have to do things “right”. Don’t be unfair towards a company who, despite the long wait, did a very good job at trying to bring this game over to western audiences. Porting a whole game is no easy feat, in particular one with such a peculiar system such as Kara no Shoujo.

Francesco Mario Azzena

your opinion is clearly biased. if i buy a game i want it drm-free and complete with everything… screw mangagamer their problems are not mine. if they cant compel with the market then i dont want to support them

http://twitter.com/ReSakiChan Saki

Honesty just because it isn’t EXACTLY like YOU want it,it doesn’t mean it’s bad and not worth buying.Just go on and buy the japanese version.There you can have it exactly like you want it and even complete.And now don’t go on and complain that you don’t understand japanese,that’s your own problem.

http://www.carpefulgur.com SpaceDrake

DRM is certainly not something we should just “put up with”. If anything it is a foolish concept that should be abandoned; it protects nothing and only serves to antagonize consumers and, ironically, encourage piracy of copies of software with DRM removed.

Locklear93

I agree with this completely. That said, I’ll be buy Kara no Shoujo (I buy most of MangaGamer’s releases, really), DRM and all. I don’t like that they’re DRMed, but to date, MangaGamer’s DRM has never stepped on my toes, and more importantly… I don’t feel the English VN market is developed enough to make protest by refusal to buy anything but cutting off my nose to spite my face.

PS, SpaceDrake, good to see you here. Now, go get Chantelise out so I can spend money on that, too. (I paid for four copies of Recettear–none on sale. >_<)

Ladius

Sadly the visual novel fanbase, its entitlement to piracy, its stupid cynicism and its lack of respect for anyone that doesn’t provide light-speed, free English patches is the primary cause of the lack of visual novels in the west.

If every fan supported at least one out of two titles they read the situation would be extremely different, but instead we have officially localized titles selling less than 1k when the English patches or pirated versions are downloaded thousands of times.

Ladius

Mangagamer collaborates with fantranslators, and they’ve repeatedly stated that they pay them, it’s not like they’re stealing their work. Moreover most of their games are localized in-house, and some fantranslation titles they pick up couldn’t be released unofficially because of C&D notices (like Kara no Shoujo).

That said, only two titles thus far have been localized without dubs, and in both cases the reason was simple: Mangagamer’s titles sell so poorly thanks to rampant piracy that they couldn’t licence the dubs because they weren’t included with the game, being the property of a third party studios.

By refusing to support them you’re basically contributing to the situation which caused the lack of dubs for Koihime and KnS in the first place.

http://twitter.com/Yuyucow kViN

Thanks for the thought but I don’t think we, the fans who work on these games, need to be defended like this. MG -and JAST for that matter- doesn’t go around stealing fantranslations and making money out of them. To be honest, MG doesn’t make money period but that’s another thing. It’s the fans who, when they think a project could benefit from going official seek the help of MG and the likes. Even if the latter were the first to ask, fangroups could still just ignore them because this is the internet and something like C&Ds are far from enough to stop someone.
This means all this “MG makes money out of someone else’s work and the fans get nothing” (which is wrong, translators/editors get paid and even betatesters get coupons for free games) makes no sense. Don’t buy the game if you don’t feel like it, but don’t disguise it as a way to save MY honour because it’s not. If anything I’d feel better if the game sold a lot because it would mean a lot of people read such great game.

(Burucchi already said what I think about voices/DRM so I’m saving that up.)

Ladius

I have the utmost respect for fantranslators, but name a single team or community that is able to release as many visual novels per year as MangaGamer and to port a game to a new engine in order to make it playable in English. Moreover Mangagamer is cooperating with many fantranslation teams (Kara no Shoujo’s Apoptosis being an example), providing them a legitimate venue for their work instead of dodging Cease&Desist notices.

I know you’re a nice person, but this kind of reaction is the reason why everyone think to be entitled to pirate official releases, lamenting at the same time the sad state of the visual novel market in the west.

Fact is, MangaGamer, JAST and Aksys are the only publishers that are still trying to support this genre, and they can stay alive only if the fanbase support them. Everyone can feel entitled and pirate, but by doing so this scene is going to die again like when Hirameki went down.

Crimson_Cloud

Why do you think that I’m aiming my comment on this new title. I didn’t even played it yet. I wasn’t even talking about the translation qualities. I buy their games and as a supporter, the DRM hurts me but I can also except it cuz of all the pirating we are having today. What I am actually saying is that if they are like the true ”fans” then they would know what voices mean to us and cutting them out is like cutting the 50% of the game. I say do it right or don’t do it at all. This title will be handled just like Koihime Musou. We all know how it all went.

Probably you haven’t read about the reasons of the lack of vo in Kara no Shoujo. The dubs weren’t property of Innocent Grey, and had to be bought from another company who, being used to the western anime market, asked a completely outlandish sum that surpassed many times the cost of the game’s localization.

If Mangagamer titles sold 10k copies they could’ve probably afforded it, but when your best selling title can’t break 2k you really don’t have that much budget.

Crimson_Cloud

I understand that mate, I really do. If they had more money they would send titles with extras our way every month. But what I’m trying to say is that I’m putting myself in a view of thousand others. You and me, we will buy the game to support the company for getting over thorns to get this tittle out here, with voices or not. But others will say ”Ah hell, no voices! No way I’m gonna get this!”. And some will then pirate it especially with a voice pack that will raise from the bottom of the Internet. And all this budget talk will be meaningless to most of the people, half don’t understand it and half doesn’t care. You have to admit that there are angry fans who will not buy a game like this on purpose.

Exkaiser

If only there were a thousand other people interested in buying this game, huh?

That’s kind of the problem here.

Ladius

Yeah, sadly that’s true, but that’s also why the fanbase (knowing how things are regarding sales and localization budgets) should try to support them and to provide the best possible situation both for us as consumers and for them as publishers. This is such a little market that even discussions in this thread, on 4chan or in other boards can have a little impact.

http://www.siliconera.com/ Ishaan

I hope this doesn’t come off as rude or harsh because I don’t mean for it to. I’m just trying to provide a different perspective here:

For a second, consider this. Visual novels hardly make any money. A lot of the staff that work at companies like MangaGamer could get higher-paying, less stressful and more fulfilling jobs where they aren’t exposed to cranky consumers elsewhere, perhaps even working on different kinds of games. If they weren’t fans, they wouldn’t be working in the visual novel business at all.

The fact of the matter is that fan-translators have no accountability, are bound by no legal rules, and while that’s great for consumers in the short-term, in the long term, it leads to the genre as a whole dying out because no one makes any money from it.

Perhaps I see it this way because the same goes for a site like Siliconera, where we go out of our way to cover games that aren’t exactly popular. We could do the exact same thing we do now with more mainstream games, and Siliconera would be a much bigger site. Content would be easier to find, interviews would be easier to obtain, we’d get more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep at a stretch a day, and I wouldn’t have to wade through a sea of cranky Tales fans every time I looked at the comments.

Just my two cents. ;)

Ladius

Yeah, I think many people don’t understand that fantranslators aren’t eternal, they’re often students that one day or another will have to stop devoting so much time to their passions because of work, family or simply a change of heart (not to mention various beefs inside the vn fanbase).

Look at Ixrec: he did an astounding job, bringing us many vns in a matter of months. As a result he is praised by a minority, offended by a majority because of petty reasons (his attempt to work out an official deal for MuvLuvAlt, his localization choices, his attitude, etc), his MVAlternative patch got leaked by someone he trusted and now he’s apparently out of business, at least for now (I hope to be wrong, of course).

Official companies are far more constant: if you create a business around visual novels and they keep being profitable you will need to churn out more and more localizations simply because thay will be your source of income, not an hobby.

http://twitter.com/Yuyucow kViN

Offtopic but no, Amaterasu’s still doing stuff. It won’t be announced for now because we thought keeping a low profile was better.

Ladius

@KviN: I’m really happy to be wrong :)

Crimson_Cloud

I see your point. Fan-translators are not bound by any rules hence they can freely do a better job while other companies have to go through all sorts of stuff to release a game. A forgotten fact from my part. I’m sorry for my previous comment, it was a poorly constructive sentence that gave various meanings. I do support MangaGamer though, it’s just sad when the some game is finally being released we are getting it half done. I know there are budget problems and I wished that every fan out there would actually buy it so we would have more titles in the future but unfortunately this decision will sway a lot of people from buying it, as they don’t care about the budget problems, they only care for that ”no voices included” part. Bottom line is that there is no bottom line. I just wished MangaGamer would have more money so we would get more games. :)

http://twitter.com/matty_125 matty

If it’s any consolation, MG has said that they would patch in the voices for Koihime Musou if 2,000 copies were sold.
I don’t think that goal has been reached, yet.

Locklear93

“This title will be handled just like Koihime Musou. We all know how it all went.”

I certainly do, since I bought Koihime Musou on release day. The voices being out definitely hurts the game, as do the few occasions throughout at which the text is messed up. That said, of all the VNs I’ve ever bought–and I’ve been buying them since it was just JAST selling them, AGES ago–Koihime Musou is absolutely my favorite to date. I got more value out of it in terms of time for my money, in terms of fun, and basically in every other way, than any of the many fully voiced VNs I have.

Since Feb 28, when it came out, I became a big enough fan that I’ve got about $400 in Koihime Musou figures, and $40 in Koihime Musou manga. That’s all without hearing the voices. It kills me when people say “Do it right, or not at all,” because that’d mean I never would’ve gotten Koihime Musou–and frankly, what I want most from MangaGamer right this minute is Shin Koihime Musou, even if it’s also missing voices.

Crimson_Cloud

Envy mode activate. Argh, it’s hard getting figures at my place. You lucky guy.
But yeah, ”Do it right, or not at all” doesn’t always work, as I too sometimes would like to get a game no matter how butchered it would be. Guess I shouldn’t have said that…

Locklear93

Outside the US, I guess? If you’re in the US, it’s not difficult, just expensive. I’d be happy to let you know which retailers (both domestic and in Japan) I’ve had the best luck with.

Crimson_Cloud

Yeah, in one of the poor countries in Europe. It’s really hard getting games and even other stuff (figures hehe) here because a lot of online shops don’t send their shipments here, even though I have money. So, most of the time I have to go out of my way which means I’ll have to pay to some person who is going there for a business trip so he would pick it up for me. It’s embarrassing sometimes (considering what I buy), but a fan have to do what fan has to do eh? Thanks anyway. :)

Obviously the sought after figures will be hellishly expensive, but if you’re lucky, the ones that you want will be awesomely priced.

http://twitter.com/gespenstmkII Akai Ringo

goal: 1. to support the ones/industry you love. 2. to get what you want. solutions: buy the mangagamer version AND pirate a fan-made voices patch AND (even better) buy the original Japanese version. major complaint: “thats crazy i don’t have that money to waste on games!” solution: get a job, and be a hardworking otaku. addendum: learn Japanese. it is very good for human beings to be open minded to all cultures of the planet Earth. pardon me.

Exkaiser

You know, as a student of the language, I think it’s pretty absurd to ask everyone to learn Japanese.

Moriken

Oh why, it’s totally no problem to learn to read japanese at a level necessary to easily understand novels…! ^^

http://geekouts.blogspot.com/ miruki

Uhm.. I don’t see how buying the Japanese version would support more English localisations of visual novels. I also don’t see why I should support the record company that didn’t want to sell the license of the voice files from the original game for a reasonable price with actually paying money for the voice files by buying the game. I’ll gladly buy the English version to support Mangagamer & Innocent Grey in hope for future localisations of their titles. :)

mirumu

I think that’s an important point you make about the record company. It seems to me quite a few Japanese companies overestimate the value of their IP on the international market. This is especially true for voicework which will obviously have only niche appeal in non-Japanese speaking territories.

What they want to charge is completely their choice of course, but if their prices aren’t realistic they’re just hurting their own profitability at the end of the day.

Ladius

Putting aside the quarrels for a moment, I really can’t wait for Kara no Shoujo :)

Crimson_Cloud

I see no quarrels, only different opinions and discussion of what we like. ;)

Lenne

I <3 MangaGamer i liked the Da Capo Visual novel very much!
too bad kara no shoujo/koihime musou doesnt have voices… while Da Capo did have them. :(

Zero_Destiny

I’ve been looking forward to this game. ^_^ I really do love this time period, it’s very interesting. So much intrigue and conflict and yet it was a time of healing. Post WWII Japan is always interesting. Love to see stories set in this time. Plus the mystery aspect already has me very psyched. Can’t wait for it to come out. :D

EvilAkito

Well, looks like I’ll be buying my first MangaGamer title soon.

Exkaiser

So-

Has anyone else actually given the trial a spin? Seems like that part got lost under the voice-acting quarrels.

I’m reading it right now, myself.

WonderSteve

If you want to be able to play more visual novel in English in the future, please do the following:

1.) Buy this game from Manga Gamer when it comes out.

2.) If you are a knowledgeable programming/hacker, please help with any effort for producing a voice patch for the English version of this game. This will teach those stupid voice agency that they are going to lose for not understanding the global market. Those voices were already recorded. What’s the point of holding them? for future museum display?

http://twitter.com/Wakuseino Dustin Perrault

So, I went through the demo a while ago: It’s pretty good. The demo’s unusually long overall, which means you really get going into the mystery and feel like you’re making real progress when the demo finally ends. It’s… really hard to pull away with how the story itself steadily gets more and more complicated as it continues. The second you think you know what’s going on, more and more information shows up, leading to new conclusions.

That being said, you know how I said that the demo was surprisingly long? The demo still ended too soon! Sure, it was a good place to end it, but it only left me with more questions and why isn’t this game out already?! Aaaaargh!

Has anyone actually played the demo? I’m going to have nightmares for weeks on end.
[Spoilers] First of all, you have a depraved school with a nurse that will bang anything that moves (including the main character and the female students). Also, lesbian relationships are as normal as it can be. To top it all, there is a psychopath who likes to remove body parts from its victims. [end spoilers]
And I thought that Higurashi was gruesome. This game takes the cake. I like the adventure elements (point&click, deduction through the use of the journal), but this is too much for me. I’ll stick to my Ace Attorney series thank you very much.